Michael Armstrong-Smith

I've been thinking about the laws of the universe recently and came across a book written by the science fiction master Arthur C. Clarke called Profiles of the Future. Over the course of many years and several revisions he put forward the hypothesis that there are 3 laws for predicting the future. These are:

Clarke's first lawWhen a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Clarke's second lawThe only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Clarke's third lawAny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The third one has various alternative explanations such as:Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it ,andAny sufficiently ancient recovered wisdom or artifact is also indistinguishable from magic

There's a couple of variations I like that are particularly related to the field of computing in which I work.

These are:Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo, andSoftware tests that inexplicably pass or fail are indistinguishable from voodoo

Over the course of my career I've seen the truth of these last two. Many years ago I had the privilege of being invited to the demo of a new piece of software that was slated to be years ahead of its time. It was being shown to us by an executive of that company and what we saw really was a leap beyond anything any of us had seen before that is, until one of us spotted that what appeared to be buttons being clicked on a screen actually looked suspiciously like a PowerPoint presentation moving from one picture to another. The buttons were not depressing and the positioning of some of the buttons moved ever so slightly from one screen to another.

At one point a question was asked from the audience if we could go back to the previous screen to look and see what one of the other buttons could do. Of course this would have been impossible but the presenter was slick and had anticipated such a request when his reply was that we had so much to cover in a short period of time and would love to show that feature in a separate demo after the main presentation.

When the presentation was over, some of us went to ask about that feature to be told that the link back to the database at head office had gone down and therefore we would not be able to see a demo of that feature after all.

Hello everyoneLike me, if you are a big user of Discoverer, you would have been alarmed at the news a few years ago that Oracle was dropping the tool.

Well, once I got over my alarm I started to think about how my clients could maximize their use of the at times millions of dollars of investment.

Oracle Corporation’s statement of direction implies that they will not force you off of Discoverer and on to another tool. It is important for you to understand, however that like all software Discoverer will one day be phased out in order to make way for more modern BI solutions.You currently have three options: Protect / Extend / Evolve

Protect your investment by staying with Discoverer, continuing to receive Oracle’s outstanding support until it runs out, after which you will be on your own

Extend you your investment by continuing to use Discoverer while integrating to other Oracle BI tools such as Oracle BI Enterprise Edition (OBIEE)

Evolve your investment by formulating a strategy to fully migrate to another tool, perhaps one of Oracle's other BI tools such as OBIEE, or to a third party tool such as SplashBI owned by Eis Technilogies

I have noticed a few instances recently of Discoverer 11g Plus failing to open or taking an awful long time to open. In both of the cases where this has been reported to me by my clients, changing the plus communication protocol from Default to Tunneling did the trick.

Hi everyoneI am still here. Just wanted to let you know that I am still in the business of working with Discoverer even though Oracle recently announced that it would be de-supported. If you need help just get in touch.

Also, you may not be aware but we have updated our Discoverer Handbook with the latest 11g version. You can find it on Amazon

If you are a use of My Oracle Support you should have received notification regarding a change to the user interface. As of July 13, 2012 Oracle will be retiring their Flash-based interface and replacing it with an improved HTML interface that has added functionality.

There is a CALL TO ACTION regarding this change. If you follow the link you will be directed to a page that will describe the changes in detail and advise what you have to do in order to take advantage of the new user interface.

If you have Auto-Update enabled, your JRE 1.6 version will be updated to JRE 7. This may happen as early as July 3, 2012. This will definitely happen after Sept. 7, 2012, after the release of 1.6.0_35 (6u35).

Oracle Forms is not compatible with JRE 7 yet. JRE 7 has not been certified with Oracle E-Business Suite yet. Oracle E-Business Suite functionality based on Forms -- e.g. Financials -- will stop working if you upgrade to JRE 7.

There is also a known issue with WebLogic 10.3.6 and JDK 1.7 and you must use JDK 1.6 for that. I will be posting shortly on this issue.

Seems to me therefore that until further notice, even for Discoverer, but definitely for E-Business Suite that you must stay on Java 1.6

Hello everyone, I know it has been a little while since my last posting but I am here, alive and kicking and gearing up to get back into blogging.In case you are not aware, I am in the process of updating my Discoverer Handbook to the latest 11g version of the product. Watch for more postings very soon.

Just wanted to let you know that on January 11, 2011, Oracle has released CP8 for 10.1.2.3. You will find it on MetaLink as patch number 10233659. When compared to CP8, 6 bugs have been fixed.

Note: when you download the readme from MyOracle, from this release Oracle has started to place the new bug fixes at the top of the list.

So far this cumulative patch has been released for the following platforms:

HP-UX Itanium

HP-UX PA-RISC (64-bit)

IBM AIX on Power Systems (64-bit)

Linux x86

Microsoft Windows 32-bit

Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit)

If you are upgrading to CP9 from any patch level prior to CP4 then JDBC patch patch p4398431_10105_GENERIC.zip for bug 4398431(release 10.1.0.5) needs to be installed before you apply CP5.This patch needs to be applied to all Oracle Homes, i.e. Infrastructure home as well as all related midtier homes.Bug 4398431 - HANG WHEN RETRIEVING A CONNECTION FROM THE IMPLICIT CONNECTION CACHE

Just wanted to let you know that on January 11, 2011, Oracle released CP2 for Discoverer 11.1.1.2.0. This is applicable for both Discoverer Plus and Viewer. You will find it on My Oracle Support (formerly MetaLink) as patch number 10409451. There are 5 bugs fixed in this cumulative patch.

So far this cumulative patch has been released for the following 5 platforms:

If you are experiencing issues running Discoverer Plus inside Microsoft IE8 the following comments may help.

So far, I have noticed that under no circumstances with Discoverer run in IE8 when it is configured to use JInitiator. If your company has enabled Discoverer to run primarily using JInitiator try adding the following parameter to your URL: _jvm_name =sun

Just wanted to let you know that on November 18, 2009, Oracle has released CP6 for 10.1.2.3. You will find it on MetaLink as patch number 8746296:. When compared to CP5, 19 enhancements or bugs have been fixed.

So far this cumulative patch has been released for the following platforms:

HP-UX Itanium

HP-UX PA-RISC (64-bit)

IBM AIX on POWER Systems (64-bit)

Microsoft Windows 32-bit

Linux x86 (works for both 32 bit and 64 bit)

Sun Solaris SPARC (32-bit)

If you are upgrading to CP6 from any patch level prior to CP4 then JDBC patch patch p4398431_10105_GENERIC.zip for bug 4398431(release 10.1.0.5) needs to be installed before you apply CP5.

This patch needs to be applied to all Oracle Homes, i.e. Infrastructure home as well as all related midtier homes.

Bug 4398431 - HANG WHEN RETRIEVING A CONNECTION FROM THE IMPLICIT CONNECTION CACHE

As you probably know, if you are using Discoverer 3 or Discoverer 4 Oracle no longer provides support for these. I've seen a lot of folks recently who are still on these older versions and who are now out of support.

I wanted to let you know that I am able to offer remote support using gotomeeting for troubleshooting issues. I can connect to your system and help diagnose problems. In most cases we can get issues resolved within an hour.

Obviously there is a fee for this service but if you are really stuck and need help who you going to turn to?